


a lot of hope in a one-man tent...

by InHisImage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode: s15e20 Carry On Coda, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27656768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InHisImage/pseuds/InHisImage
Summary: Sam deals. Family helps. Life goes on.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jack Kline & Sam Winchester
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	a lot of hope in a one-man tent...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue/gifts).



> This is an attempt to write between the lines of canon. I really hope there's some soul there and that it manages (a little) to make sense of the blank nothing they gave us. 
> 
> Title is a line from Fever Ray's Keep the Streets Empty for Me.

Sam and Dean Winchester without plot armor are humans who can, well, die. 

And not the kind of death you can wax poetics about either, not the kind of epic finale moment with a message and a morale, not the legendary conclusion to a legendary life that creeps slow and precise to reap what was sowed and carve itself into a history of foreshadowing and meaningful analogies and tears. 

No. Sam and Dean can die of a stupid senseless accident without a grand sacrifice to justify it. 

Without an angel of the Lord to heal it, or a god invested for all the wrong reasons to undo it. Without music or flair or substance. 

Like every human before them and every human after them. The natural order of things as cruel as it is normal. Nothing to write home about. 

Dean Winchester is dead and Sam is standing stock-still thinking about character arcs ended so untimely. Real life doesn’t always allow for absolution, real death doesn’t wait on you to figure your shit out so passing on feels a little bit more like redemption. It is what it is. 

They’d asked for normal. No manufactured drama, no cliffhangers, no last-minute saves. They got normal. 

Sam bawls his eyes out and rescues two children on his way home. 

\--

Jack visits when the fire dies down and all that remains of Dean Winchester is ash. 

“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry.”

Not an apology. Nature owes no one an apology for taking what is hers back to the ground. The cycle of life doesn’t exactly feel. But the new God does. 

He goes in for a hug like he’s the one who needs it. Sam grabs on a little too tight. 

He can’t stop thinking about an unfinished business, how death is an interruption, not a conclusion. The clawing sense of _not-done-yet_ frozen in stasis. Of wasted opportunities and wasted potential.You don’t find peace in death; you only hope to rest in it. 

“Thought I’d never see you again.”

“You're my family, Sam.”

It sounds like a promise and it promises continuity. The way the sun will keep rising and the world will keep turning and life will go on for the living the only way it knows how. 

Sam almost demands the planet to acknowledge his loss and pause a second, just a second, to let it sink in. But the universe doesn’t revolve around their story anymore. Only their loved ones and the family they made along the way. Those will stay, those will slow down, those will mourn. 

The cycle of life might not suspend its endless infinite goings to grieve with Sam Winchester. But the new God does. 

Not as God, though. Jack isn’t here in an official capacity. There’s no timelessness or omnipresence in his eyes. His expression is wrapped up in a soft sad warmth that mirrors the resigned sorrow in Sam's chest. Sam looks at him and sees the son they’ve raised and nurtured and believed in, watched him overgrow his nest and spread his wings, fly away from home to build his own. 

Sam looks at him and sees a child with an overnight bag returning home for a funeral. To hold and comfort and be held and comforted where and when and always when it's needed. And It feels human, familial, domestic in all the ways the divine isn’t. In all the ways flesh and blood and love can huddle together and console each other, push through the helplessness of losing and find solace in those who remain. And In all the ways Heaven and Hell and magic, entities beyond dimensions and rules, are no longer a factor and should never be again.

They’ve asked for normal. They earned normal. Sam wonders if this is what mortality tastes like, like the kind of finality you should swallow and keep on keeping on. 

\--

Sam spends three weeks at Jody’s and Miracle is spoiled rotten by three girls and a set of adults with too much love to give and a harsh unforgiving reality they’d put on hold for all the seconds necessary to celebrate the lives of those that have fallen.

\--

Sam and Eileen go on their last hunt together and save a family of five. They discuss retirement and the current job market and a downpayment for a house with a picket fence and a devil trap in the basement while doing whatever can be done for cleanup in Baby. He signs a question that makes her giggle and makes his heart flutter, ache a little. 

She says yes.

\--

Jack is there for every win and every loss, for every beginning and every ending. Sometimes for those nights when Sam hikes a little too far from a new home and a new child and a new life to work through ancient nightmares coming back to haunt him just the day before, or through convoluted dreams of _fight, fight, fight,_ with the brother he carries with him wherever he goes and the angel who died for him. 

Jack is there when little Dean is eighteen and gets his first tattoo.

Sometimes for Christmas dinners too. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for everything. :)


End file.
